Shaders and filters

Shaders and filters can be applied to video games to achive some kind of visual effect. These can be from attempting to replicate aperture grille displays, NTSC cables, or something more exotic.

Types

Main article: List of shaders and filters

crt-geom-flat.cg, a popular CRT shader.

CRT Shaders

Main article: CRT Shaders

These replicate aperture grille CRTs, which have sharp images and strong scanlines. They do not replicate shadowmask CRT displays.

NTSC Filters

Main article: NTSC filters

These replicate the cables used to connect the system to the TV. They vary in quality, with the lowest being RF, then composite, then s-video and RGB (scart) being the highest quality. Many systems have NTSC filters built into them. They can also be separately downloaded in .filter format.

GameBoy Shader

GameBoy Shader with default urine palette. Other palettes are available.

This .cgp shader replicates the dot matrix screen of a Game Boy, complete with the ghosting problems to reproduce certain visual effects. Made by Harlequin. Requires RetroArch.

Emulators

List of emulators and what shaders they use.

Name	Shader file types	Notes
RetroArch	.cg, .cgp, .filter, .shader	.shader only can be used through phoenix, not RGUI. Filters from bsnes v82 and below work in RetroArch. .cgp stacks several .cg files on top of one another.
DOSBox	.fx	Only on special builds such as SVN Daum.
Higan	.filter,	.shader removed in future higan releases, .fiter works in old bsnes  Not current Higan.
MAME	.fx
OpenEMU	.cg,
Snes9x	.cg, .shader
Project64	.fx	Only with a custom Rice Video plugin.
PCSX-R	.slv/.slf, .vp/.fp	Requires Pete's OpenGL2 or gpuBladeSoft.
ePSXe	.slv/.slf, .vp/.fp	Requires Pete's OpenGL2 or gpuBladeSoft.
PCSX2	.fx	Support added in r5390 (after v1.0.0) Must be named shader.fx and be in the main directory.  PageUp to activate.
Dolphin	.txt	Can only be used with OpenGL backend.

Downloads

Libretro cg shaders

Snes9x cg shader pack

NTSC filters: Win32 Win64  Linux32  Linux64 MacOS

PS1 shaders PS2 shaders

Further reading

All things shaders and filters

Cg shader spec.